Taking Your Tech Résumé from Good to Great

What does your résumé say about you? Does it paint a picture of you as an average worker, or as an exceptional candidate with a lot to offer?

Fortunately, you have total control over how your résumé presents your experience and accomplishments. Here are some changes you can make to take it from so-so to super.

Contact Information

Streamline your contact section by ditching the street address and just listing your city and state, mobile phone number, and professional email address.

Include a shortened descriptive link to your best online profile or website, as well as your GitHub account (if you maintain one); make it easy for employers to find your contact information by judiciously placing links to personal websites and blogs near the end of the document. Remember, applicant-tracking systems will skip over information contained in headers, footers or tables—so don’t inundate your résumé with certification buttons or company logos.

When writing, always keep in mind where you want the reader’s eye to go. “Use color and bold face type selectively; when you want to draw the reader’s attention to a specific section of your résumé,” said Kevin Morris, an executive IT résumé writer.

Headline and Summary Section

Position your résumé for the job you want—not the jobs you’ve had—and make it more searchable by adding relevant keywords and areas of expertise to your headline.

Creative Technology Director who evolved ABC Company’s fledgling IT function into a world-class business support organization, growth enabler, and value creator | Serve as the Voice of IT to all clients and business stakeholders, championing infrastructure solutions that facilitate corporate growth and customer success | Recruit, develop, and challenge high-performance teams | Strong financial/business perspective and engineering skill set | MS in Computer Science.

Consensus Builder | Problem Solver | Crisis Manager | Negotiator

Your technical skills are a key part of your sales pitch. Instead of repeating your core skills over and over throughout the résumé, place them in a table, or briefly list them in your “Experience” section.

“Mention them once and focus the rest of your résumé on achievements and the role you are interested in,” said Fatemah Mirza, professional résumé writer, career coach and owner of CareerTuners. “Otherwise, your résumé will look just like everyone else’s and it won’t engage the reviewer.”

Professional Experience Section

Replace non-descriptive job titles with relevant ones to show why you’re qualified for a position, or place keywords in parentheses to explain an unclear job title. For example:

Create short job descriptions for each position to show the reader what you’ve accomplished, and to support the information in your opening summary. What was your original mission? Why were you hired, and how did things improve? Tell a story to draw in the reader.

“Focus on the results you achieved to make your résumé standout and easier to read,” Mirza said.

Finally, offer just three to five quantified achievement bullets to support each job description, and front-load them whenever possible so they convey business value. Here’s an example of a business-focused achievement bullet:

Improved development processes enabling MegaDigital to deliver 3 major releases within the first 20-months | Subsequently able to release product updates every 3 months.

If you’re interested in taking your résumé from good to great, check out these additional “before and after” examples from Kevin Morris:

Creative Technology Director who evolved ABC Company’s fledgling IT function into a world-class business support organization, growth enabler, and value creator | Serve as the Voice of IT to all clients and business stakeholders, championing infrastructure solutions that facilitate corporate growth and customer success | Recruit, develop, and challenge high-performance teams | Strong financial/business perspective and engineering skill set | MS in Computer Science.

Consensus Builder | Problem Solver | Crisis Manager | Negotiator

Fixing non-descriptive job titles

[This candidate’s official job title hurt his chances of landing a senior-level analyst position. The second sample below is an earlier title this candidate held at another company:]

[Below: Using the job title section to showcase an evolving storyline of business value creation and career success. This client had worked for the same company since 1999 and we wanted to show growth despite a career with just one company. The blue highlights tell a story of how he took this IT organization from startup to key driver of business success.]

Full Job Description Samples

[Here is an example of going from horrible-to-great. This kind of transformation takes digging into the person’s work and discovering where value has been created. In this instance, we had an IT executive discussing all of his tactical work without giving any attention to his role as IT strategist.]

Member of the Executive Team responsible for identifying IT and process improvement including applicant tracking systems, HRIS systems, timekeeping, and contract software.

Design, oversee development, and support internal cloud and web-based systems to support rapid growth.

Research, develop requirements, and determine scope for business process improvements to increase efficiencies or reduce costs.

Manage all stages of software development to support business processes and support critical business strategies.

Manage Technology Projects. Responsibilities include team selection and scheduling of resources, project monitoring and reporting, testing and implementation, and training.

Evaluate and recommend technology platforms within U.S. Government agencies including the Department of Defense and the Department of State such as databases, system migrations, cloud base computing. Have also managed custom software development projects for these clients.

Redefined IT organization creating a collaborative environment fully aligned with business vision

Recruited to facilitate business growth by defining a business-centric technology vision and bringing real structure and governance to the IT environment | Spearhead technology and communications functions to include enterprise business systems, software design and development, technology projects, and user training | Lead efforts to centralize IT, automate administrative processes, and set technology guidelines and policies | Evaluate and recommend technology platforms | Manage $6M CAPEX/OPEX, 21 personnel.

Facilitated nearly 3X company growth and 2X contract revenue increase with minimal increase in business costs.

Eliminated back office technology issues allowing company to focus on business development and achieve growth goals.

Resolved nearly all company pain points through process improvements and more efficient use of technology.

Improved decision-making capabilities by providing transparency into contracts, projects, and company performance.

[Below is an excellent example of good-to-great. Notice how we eliminated terms like “responsible for” reorganized the best information to improve the flow. Note how the first bullet of the AFTER version begins with “Orchestrated successful Reorganization” as this was the primary reason he was hired. The other 2 bullets are frontloaded to put the business impact first. Also notice how in the AFTER version the bullets no longer focus on job roles. Finally, notice how 3 bullet points paint a much more vivid picture than the original 6 (in this instance, less is more)]

Responsible for management of 4 product development teams, product maintenance team and the Quality Assurance team. Organization consisted of 60 engineers with a budget of $12 million. Member of the executive staff responsible for setting company direction. Extensive pre and post sales customer interaction with large strategic and multinational customers. Worldwide installed base of 130,000 units.

Delivered on product commitments that resulted in the delivery of 3 major releases over a 20-month period.

Managed and directed new product development and maintenance engineering that generated over 95% of the company’s revenue.

Reorganized the engineering department into three lines of business; that enabled each team to focus resources in areas that were critical to each line of business.

Participated in numerous developers’ conferences, and round-table discussions to gain an understanding of features that were important to the customers. Worked within cross-functional team to incorporate strategic functional items into future product architecture.

Initiated a process improvement effort that resulted in a Quality Manual that outlines the software development process, Coding Standards Guide and formal code inspection process.

Co-sponsored the development of a Case Management Guide that defined how customer support and Engineering interacted. Resulted in a greatly improved working relationship between Engineering and Customer Service.

Orchestrated successful reorganization, separating Engineering into 3 business lines, bringing structure to product support and development, and enabling teams to focus resources in areas critical to each business line.

Created new efficiencies and capabilities by redefining the relationship between Engineering and Customer Service.

Improved development processes enabling MegaDigital to deliver 3 major releases within the first 20-months | Subsequently able to release product updates every 3 months.

[Below is a sample of a client who was serving in a GM role but really wanted to get back to hardcore engineering. The BEFORE version doesn’t address this desired change and also includes a lot of technologies that he isn’t interested in using going forward. The AFTER serves as a good example of building your résumé for the job you want.]

Before:

CAREER SUMMARY

General manager with over ten years of experience in defense-oriented precision manufacturing. Began career in software development and progressively expanded responsibilities to include project management, quality assurance, operations, and overall team leadership. Known for building trusting relationships with demanding customers and making company processes more efficient.

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6 Responses to “Taking Your Tech Résumé from Good to Great”

Forgive my ignorance, but what does ‘PTO’ mean? To me, it means Parent-Teacher Organization, formerly referred to as PTA. There may be other acronims in your article that you want to define a little bit more clearly, as not everything is obvious and self-evident to every reader.

WHAT?!?!!? If I have to dissect the sentence to determine what it means, then it is poorly written; because the intent is communication. Is this over-inflated gibberish in resumes and job descriptions specific to IT, or has it become the norm?

Here a word that captures how I feel about the whole thing… ridiculous! I bet everyone who reads this will know what that means.

My company recently “laid off” about 1,000 (mostly) long-term employees. I had worked there 18 years & thought I would retire there. Nope! Gone!

Now I’m over 50 and looking for a new job for the first time in nearly 2 decades; and I feel like I’m reading a foreign language when I look at these ridiculous “modern” resumes. I can’t help but think of Dilbert’s idiotic PHB (Pointy Haired Boss).

Then to add insult to injury, most of the time you can’t even get people to actually READ your resume. Instead, they use these “time saving” keyword searches; then shoot out “personalized-looking” emails for a job that, had they actually read your resume, they would know you had no interest in it. (But a word or two on your resume matched a keyword search so you got an email.)

Author

Leslie Stevens-Huffman is a business and careers writer based in Southern California. She has more than 20 years’ experience in the staffing industry and has been writing blog posts, sample resumes and providing sage career advice to the IT professionals in our Dice Community since 2006. Leslie has a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism from the University of Southern California.